Wind

During the summer months, the prevailing winds in Beijing are from the south (Figure 39a). The standard design of other neighborhood developments in the area are of uniform height, rectangular-shaped buildings laid out in rows, with the long sides facing north to south. This configuration does not allow winds to penetrate deeply into the developments as individual buildings block airflow from the north or south. MIT's proposal staggered both the height and the plan of the buildings, allowing southern breezes to penetrate the site for passive cooling purposes.

The prevailing winter winds in Beijing are from the north (Figure 39b). The site design therefore reduced wind speeds throughout the site by placing the tallest buildings on the northern edge of the site in order to block and divert winter winds from the north. A CFD model was used to verify the effectiveness of this design, and results shown in Figures 40 through 42 demonstrate that the winter air speed in the interior of the site was generally reduced by more than 50 percent on the exterior of the site.